How Do You Shorten Time to Market, Increase Profits, Deploy the Best Solutions for Customers?

Last week I wrote about 8 new year’s resolutions Cisco is making to partners. And if you’ve ever set a resolution and successfully achieved it, you know that having a trusted friend there to help track your progress or call when you need support is key to keeping those resolutions.

Consider Cisco your trusted friend to help make and keep those resolutions with two programs to ensure you achieve success in 2012: Steps to Success and Partner Practice Builder. Both are free resources that are available to all Cisco Registered partners. Oh, did I say they’re free?

These two programs help you optimize, support, plan, and develop strategies for success and profitability in 2012. Here’s how these tools work:

What is it?
A tool that outlines and supports each step of a successful customer engagement with methodologies, questionnaires, templates, and resources.

How does it work?Steps to Success outlines a step-by-step customer engagement/deployment model helping partners to better sell, deliver, and support Cisco Advanced Technology solutions and also help begin those architecture-based business discussions with customers.

Using the tool, you’re guided through the project lifecycle with support for the sales call; offers tools to plan, design, and deploy the best solutions for customers; then you’ll also get advice to support and optimize your existing solutions for customers.

Who is it for?Divided into Enterprise, Midmarket, SMB, you’ll find templates, network readiness questionnaires to assess the customer’s current environment, detailed planning and design. Some resources are available in 17 different languages, including: Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Polish, and Arabic.

What are partners saying?
“The Steps to Success program gives our Solutions Organization a framework for selling complete solutions including services. The engagement model greatly shortens time to market. I can turn around a customer request in a very professional and efficient manner. A lot of work has been done for me, and it cuts down the proposal preparation time from five days to about two in some cases. The Cisco knowledge helps us build credibility, and that directly translates to more wins.”

What is it?What are your biggest challenges? What is stopping you from getting ahead? Partner Practice Builder (PPB) is your online “virtual consultant” assisting you in building a new Cisco practice, creating a business plan from the ground up or simply supporting something you’re already doing.

There are three ways to use PPB: 1) using the self service portal 2) with your partner account team that will collaborate on a shared business plan, or 3) contract with a consultant who can deliver a one- to two-day on-site customized workshop.

How does it work?By providing you with business intelligence and best practices from leading industry sources, you can combine those with Cisco’s experience and your own resources to develop your strategy. PPB focuses on realistic goals and measurable outcomes.

What partners are saying?
“A very structured approach, we are launching our managed service business this year and PPB was a tremendous help.”

“I just wanted to let you know how much of a help the webinars and coaching sessions with Ken have been. The PPB site is great too, we have been using it internally to ramp up our junior engineers and sales staff. Thanks for hosting the program.”

To take full advantage of the Partner Practice Builder program, join the upcoming, bi-weekly business planning webinars.Wednesdays, February 15, 2012 – March 28, 2012, 10 -11 a.m. PST
This 5-part series brings together the value of Partner Practice Builder’s step-by-step approach to practice building with personalized, one-on-one coaching. Sessions are delivered via a series of virtual webinars and one-on-one consulting so you can maintain your focus and momentum from the convenience of your office of choice all at no cost to you.Visit this link to reserve your spot and learn more.

Have you used these programs or are you planning to? Let us know what you think?

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